Welcome to Picopond

Picopond is a microfunding system for financing the net projects of Noemata. It's a nickel-and-dime operation run out of an exploration of ways of making a living from doing public domain, copylefted work on the internet.

The deal

With Picopond you can fund a net project by Noemata with a small amount of money. The funding is displayed on the project web site and appears as a one-line text or text-link. See example below:

Generally Noemata keeps all projects online and publicly accessible. The funding information will be attached and displayed together with the project, whether as material for exhibitional, documentational, or archival purposes.

The lead

Net projects by Noemata are dispersed on different web sites. Below is a list of entrance points where you can explore projects you might find worthy of microfunding. Funding information is generally available at the bottom of a project page at a web site.

The idea

Alias Noemata is the working moniker of Bjørn Magnhildøen born 1966 in Norway by his mother. Noemata has been active within net art and technology for a quarter-century, from mail art to internet art, 1982-2007 [1]. From this, Noemata has received prizes and funding to some degree but not enough to make a living in Western Europe. After having given up his regular job as a system developer in an insurance firm in the year of poom, around 2000, Noemata has been supporting himself and not from doing net projects within art and new technology (insert comma to disambiguate the sentence).

According to EU's definition of poverty he's poor - below 50% of his country's average income; on the other hand this definition makes 10% of the population poor in one of the richest countries in the world. With OECD's definition he's still below the poverty line. As with other lines they aren't visible in reality; the only line we can see is the horizon - maybe that's why the sea symbolizes death, the only straight line?

Anyway, who's he to complain? One billion people live on less than 1 dollar a day [2]; he's a citizen of a rich country; in fact, he's so spoiled that he can work without being concerned about always getting paid.

So what's the idea? In reality I'm not sure. We all need things to do, we need to do things. I was lucky to be born at this place and time, though I'm not sure that sentence has meaning. If I believed that everybody could be happy and content I would rather work in that direction than do net project, but luckily enough I don't believe that. On the other hand my forefathers were murderers, and in the future still the lamb won't sleep with the lion.

Well, if you like some of these projects you might want to give some money to them and show your appreciation; maybe the schema here is sharing-similarity and a form of social networking in part - we all like each other, maybe because we all become more and more alike each other? Let's move on to the next paragraph.

In 2003 Ars Publica was established as a means of exploring ways of funding Noemata [3][4]. Picopond is founded now as I write this introductory text, or in reality, will be founded later, because the text comes first, as an alternative way of funding Noemata, exploring the concept of small-time microfunding of net projects, hoping people might find them $adjective.. By the time you're reading this, you, not me, ... Sorry, I just realized that there's a distinction between a writer and a reader of this text - I didn't realize it before now, which also makes one think ... What does that mean? When I read what I wrote, am I a writer or a reader, and what's the difference? It seems the difference is that the writer can edit the text, and that that's the only difference. That's also why I copyleft my projects and material and just leave it in the public domain; I don't think anybody owns it - once it leaves me, well, me leaves it also; it occurs to me this relation is less a parent-child type than a peer-peer type - I mean, like a writer has several readers for instance - one to one too many. As there isn't any aura around the artwork or the artist, I don't even care to finish that sentence properly. OK, you might edit this text, but you might not edit it while you read it. I guess. But then, when you edit it you have to read it - it's called writing. The writing is formulated. The reading is formulated. We approach the state where editing isn't the difference between writing and reading. Born to be alive. It was written to be read. It was read to be written. Alive to be born. I was born for nine months. There is no beginning, there is no writer, so to say. Every leaf grows as to get as much sun as possible; this defines the exact angle of the bifurcation. If there is anything it would be a reader. The sun made us. And the reader devours.

Fine. As this introductory text comes to an end one gets the idea. Does that mean the idea comes last? How strange that would be. Finally we have the beginning!